Kersplat!-alie, SBSC

Kersplat!-alie—the occasional klutzy stand-in for Natalie known to throw laptops high in the air and damage the corner—has struck again. This time, the whole glass panel on the screen has shattered after a failure to successful navigate a flight of stairs.

Due to a bad case of the Sundays, there aren’t many pictures from yesterday. […]

Better Noise! Come and Take It

With Mark and Tony gone, Enzo had his first full day of playing with the detector noise yesterday. In the morning, he rearranged the grounding of things, and improved the noise a lot. Everybody is very happy.

Going with the unrelated theme of awesome lunch locations that we’d so far failed to experience, a crew […]

Half Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Yesterday morning was a flurry of work as we prepared to remove the cryostat from the gondola so that noise tests could proceed without disrupting other gondola integration. Gondola integration progresses well: the SSS (historically named “Second Sun Sensor” or “Simple Sun Sensor”), was mounted, as were transmitters and the new floor. Star cameras are […]

Artificial Sun, New Floor

Andrei and Greg tested the new pinhole sun sensors yesterday, using the big powerful artificial sun lamp. By big and powerful, I mean it will melt plastic from across the room. Josh, who had arrived the previous evening with Giles, took over Mark’s new starboard side hex cell floor. Noise tests continue with increasing frustration, […]

Day Off: Mini-golf and Downtown Palestine

Update 25 June 2010: I’ve added some photos that Juan took during the day (to have pictures of me, as proof that I exist. Plus Juan’s a good photographer).

Juan, Natalie, Laura, and I took our first full day off yesterday. The morning was spent doing laundry, swimming, reading, and otherwise lazing about. In the […]

Another Quiet Day

Yesterday was another quiet day. Detector noise tests continued as did programming and miscellaneous jobs. We got a bunch of new goodies, some that we ordered and some from CSBF.

For some reason (maybe just the time of year) we’ve had a lot of people visiting for tours of CSBF and of the highbay. Barth […]

Waiting and Leisure

There are not many pictures of what happened yesterday, and as such I don’t really remember what happened. It may also be that not much happened. Team Noise was waiting for me to debug problems, and Team We Want to Point needed to balance the inner frame. Both things tend to lead to lots of […]

FIRE! (and Solar Panel Test, Gondola Moving)

While disconnecting the batteries yesterday, Mark shorted the terminals with an allen key. The allen key got part melted and the bolt stuck onto the end. Then the battery cables caught fire and broke the circuit. Tristan was up above at the time, and got a good fright. Nick was nearby and pretty quick about […]

Gondola Mounting Action (Featuring Cryostat)

Update 22 June 2010: I’ve added some images acquired from Juan’s camera (of the evening’s barbecue).

The scoop and star cameras were removed yesterday. This was to facilitate gyro box orientation tests, and for mounting the cryostat. Also mounted were the receiver crate, DAS (data acquisition system), a new photodiode sun sensor, a transmitter, and […]

Beam Maps, etc

Update 22 June 2010: I’ve added some images acquired from Juan’s camera.

Not a lot of pictures were taken yesterday. I had broken the DAS with a code update and spent a while wrestling with that. Afterwards, we used the XY-stage to make a map of the beam coming out of the cryostat.